The End of Your Life Book Club

"What are you reading?" That's the question Will Schwalbe asks his mother Mary Anne as they sit in the waiting room of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. In 2007, after Mary Anne returned from a humanitarian trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan, she was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer. A publishing executive and journalist, Schwalbe tells how he started a "book club" with his mother that brought them together as her life came to a close. Over two years they carried on conversations that were wide-ranging and also deeply personal, prompted by an eclectic array of books and a shared passion for reading. Reading isn't the opposite of doing, Schwalbe finds; it's the opposite of dying. The result is a tale of loss that is also a joyful, often humorous celebration of life—a love letter from Schwalbe to his mother, and from both of them to the printed page.

"A wonderful book about wonderful books and mothers and sons and the enduring braid between them. Like the printed volumes it celebrates, this story will stay with you long after the last page."—Mitch Albom

"With a refreshing forthrightness, and an excellent list of books included, this is an astonishing, pertinent, and wonderfully welcome work."—Publishers Weekly (starred)